


Again, for the First Time

by ellorgast



Series: Monster Socks! [2]
Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: Canon - Manga, First Meetings, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-15
Updated: 2014-09-15
Packaged: 2018-02-17 13:16:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2310956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellorgast/pseuds/ellorgast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chiba Mamoru, first year Harvard student, is about to make some new friends.  And maybe those new friends are also old friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Of Libraries and Tacos

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, thank you for reading! If you are reading this after Dreamweave, you might be confused to discover that it takes place some time (a few years) prior to that one, even though Dreamweave is the first in the series. I placed Dreamweave first because it is the first story I wrote in this universe, and is the reason the others exist. 
> 
> This story takes us back in time to introduce the characters properly. Please enjoy.

The library was always too crowded on Sundays.

Mamoru supposed it made a kind of sense, from a theoretical standpoint. The library was always particularly deserted on Friday night, as most students fled their responsibilities with a sense of start-of-the-weekend optimism. It remained barren through Saturday morning, as those same students stayed at home to nurse hangovers. Saturday afternoon, a few more students rallied themselves out of bed to make a token effort at studying, but by dinner time, it was already clearing out again for round two of weekend fun. This was, theoretically, the life that a student was meant to lead, even a student of Harvard University. 

Of course, that was what Mamoru had heard, second hand, of the fabled student life, but the midway point of his first semester at the prestigious school saw the premed student with few social relationships outside of the classroom, and little desire for them. It may have made for some long and empty nights, but the payoff had been showing in his grades, and he intended to keep things that way. Thus was Mamoru stuck, every Sunday, competing with frantic, red-eyed students for some of the prized study locations. He resented them for their poor study habits and time management skills, but mostly he resented them for taking up all the study carols and tables.

He was already getting a later start than usual, having indulged in a longer morning run than he usually took time for. It was a routine that he had held onto as a stress relief since his high school days, a coping mechanism with the added benefit of keeping him battle-ready, a necessity that was never far from his mind. It had been a good run, too; the sun shining in a last-ditch effort at summer, the air crisp in his lungs. He had been almost downright jovial when he walked into the library.

But all that joy was unraveling now, as he paced the aisles, finding one table after another occupied. He grumbled to himself as he passed by his peers taking up precious study space to surf Facebook or watch movie trailers. Couldn't they do that at home, waste their own time instead of his with their pointless activities?

He was almost contemplating reporting someone to the surly librarians for eating or talking loudly on their cellphone, just to get them kicked out, when he spotted a near-empty table tucked away behind the stacks. Upon further inspection, he found only a single individual occupying one side of it, leaving the other half tantalizingly clear. 

With speed that could have broken the sound barrier, Mamoru launched himself down the aisle and dropped his bag on the table, triumphantly staking his claim. His table-mate gave a snort and shifted in his seat, settling back in a deep slumber. It figured that Mamoru would find himself next to yet another of those slackers he was so complaining about inwardly, but at least it was a sleeper instead of a cellphone talker. As he began to pull his books out, the sleeper snored softly, shifting his sneakers where they rested on top of his open notebook.

If he were honest with himself, Mamoru would acknowledge that there was a reason why he made the trek to the library every day instead of studying at home, where it was quieter and he was allowed to eat. Because even though he had lived alone since he was fifteen, even though he spent every possible morning talking to Usako (because he could more reliably drag himself out of bed to talk to her at 6 a.m. when it was evening in her time zone than vice-versa), it was nice to be among other people, even nameless ones who took all the good seats. 

He stole a glance at the young man across from him. His sneakers were sprinkling dirt onto the open page of his notebook. His jeans were frayed at the hem, a Batman logo belt buckle prominently displayed, with a kind of audacity that Mamoru could not imagine possessing. His arms were crossed over his t-shirt, hiding whatever witty phrase was printed across it. He had sunk deep into the dark wooden chair, and had an orange hoodie balled up between his head and the back of the chair. The dark chocolate brown curls that pooled around his broad shoulders were as rumpled as if he had just rolled out of bed, which was perhaps exactly what he had done prior to entering the library.

There was something oddly comforting about the sleeper's presence, and as Mamoru worked his way through his organic chemistry textbook, he could feel some of the tension draining from his shoulders. He could almost forget about the other jerks in the library under the steady drone of the sleeper's breathing. It was almost reassuring, in a way.

Midway through the chapter on haloalkanes, the brunette man rolled over, dropping his arm over the side of the chair. One of his fingers was swollen and taped up, and Mamoru automatically considered a diagnosis, whether a sprain or possibly a mild fracture. Actual medical school was still a long way off, but that did not mean that he had not been studying on his own far longer than he needed to. He had, after all, spent a fair number of nights dragging himself through his balcony door sporting any number of youma-induced injuries. He made his own best guinea pig.

Despite his apparent laziness, the haphazard barricade of books that crowded the sleeper's side of the table was rather impressive. Most of the titles and authors were foreign to Mamoru, but some he had heard of. Nietzsche, Plato, Kant, Heidegger, Sartre. Of course, he had heard someone mention once that philosophy majors did nothing but argue over pints of beer, but the reading list was still somewhat impressive. At least he was using his own notebook as a footrest, instead of the library books.

He was rapidly writing notes, almost forgetting about the sleeper across from him, when the table started to rumble. A cellphone danced over the wood surface by the sleeper's feet. It took several rounds of the tiny device frantically vibrating for the sleeper to roll over with a long sigh. Mamoru watched out of the corner of his eye as he slowly lowered each leg and pushed himself up in his seat, until he simply hunched forward instead. The brunette man groggily stared at the phone for several seconds, as though uncertain of its purpose. It finally went still.

Satisfied that the electronic menace was not going to move again, he glanced around the library as if to remind himself of where exactly he had fallen asleep, scratching at two-day stubble with the fingers that were not taped up. It took an inordinate amount of time for him to notice that there was somebody on the other side of the table, and when he did, he had to slowly blink at Mamoru a few times to get his bearings. Mamoru tried very hard not to notice.

His gaze shifted to the literature fort that had been erected between them, and the brunette man seemed to return a little more to the waking world. "Shit, sorry man," he mumbled, swaying to his feet and grabbing a stack of Greek philosophers away from where they had been encroaching on Mamoru's territory. 

"It's no problem," the black-haired man replied, relieved, for once, that the silence had been broken. "Looks like you need the extra space."

The recently-awoken sleeper tried to talk around a yawn as he piled the books haphazardly to the side. "Yeah, I had this awesome idea that I could write all my philosophy essays in one go, since I'm saying the same basic thing in all of them. Now I gotta write what amounts to about 25 pages of the meaning of life by Wednesday, and I haven't even figured out what Plato's deal was yet."

"Hasn't the western world been debating Plato's deal for a few thousand years now?"

"Which is exactly why Wikipedia should be able to deliver a better synopsis by now." The brunette rubbed the sleep out of his eye. "Actually, I'm just data collecting so I can sound like I know what I'm talking about when I blow all their arguments apart using Aboriginal circular philosophy. Nothing gets a prof more excited than the idea that Nietzsche was wrong on account of believing that time is linear."

Mamoru was not entirely sure how to follow that logic, or whether he was meant to. "I don't think I get it."

"But it sounds smart, right? What are you doing? Science?"

"Organic chemistry."

"Okay, nobody does that shit unless they plan to do something with it. Let me guess, med school?"

"That's the goal."

The brunette man stretched, his t-shirt (saying something or other about pirates that Mamoru's non-native English skills were completely baffled by) also stretching over a muscular chest, and settled back with an arm behind his head. "You're nuts, bro. I mean, don't get me wrong, I got nothing but the highest respect for you doctors, but who wants to spend all their days looking at other people's nasty sick bodies?"

Mamoru used to consider whether he actually had the stomach to be dealing with blood and organs and bodily fluid on a day-to-day basis. Then he discovered youma, and decided any nastiness associated with the human body paled in comparison with having a giant slimy larvae-like monster pop like a blister directly over his head thanks to a well-placed but poorly-timed Love-Me Chain. The squishy journey home for a shower put his entire scope of "disgusting" into perspective. "If you overlook that part, it's really very interesting. The goal isn't to just look at sick bodies, it's to turn them into healthy ones."

"That's noble and stuff, but I think I'll stick to my dead philosophers. No asking them to pee in a cup."

He really should be returning to his chapter on haloalkanes, but somehow the conversation had already drawn him in. "So instead you just--what was it? Ask them to stop thinking of time as linear."

"Exactly! I mean, sure it means altering your entire perception of reality and undermining thousands of years of western thought, but they're smart guys. They could pull it off." He gave a lazy grin, and Mamoru found himself uncertain of when his tablemate was quite serious.

"See, I don't think I could do that. Argue about something with no clear answers."

"But see, that's our problem, isn't it? Science makes us believe that there is a cut-and-dry solution to everything. It makes us impatient with anything we can't reduce to a formula. It has its place, but it can't explain, say, why my friend Sasha thinks Celine Dion is anybody worth listening to."

"Actually, if you study the tonal frequency and the rhythm of pop music, you can actually calculate the way that emotional response is manipulated--"

The brunette threw his head back onto his arm to laugh. It was far too loud of a laugh for a library environment, making some part of Mamoru cringe a little, but the other part was swept up with the man's good cheer. He had a feeling that he was the sort of person who often got away with being a little too loud. "Oh fuck me. I'm gonna text him that right now, that there is scientific basis for his bad taste." Mamoru watched as he picked up the phone that had so rudely awoken him before, and typed in his message one-handed, grinning vindictively. "This argument's been ongoing for a while. I give him shit about it only because I'm right."

In the quiet lull punctuated by furious key-tapping, Mamoru glanced down at his unfinished notes. He could go back to organic chemistry, like he was supposed to. Or he could find something to say, before the conversation fizzled out and his inordinately loud companion found somewhere else to nap. He tapped his pen nervously on the page. "So your friend... Sasha? Is he a student here too?"

"Nah, Sasha thinks he's too special and artsy for Harvard. He's at the Art Institute, doing obscene things with paint." He flipped his phone closed and dropped it on the table, taking up his relaxed pose again. "So you're what, second year?"

"Freshman."

"That means they've got you eating in Annenberg. Beautiful place, but the food is shit."

"Yeah, it's a bit... overwhelming." Mamoru had spent his first week in residence wondering how he could be expected to eat with dozens of stained glass windows and busts of historical figures peering down at him, chandeliers glittering over the dark wood. It was full of echoes and the creaking of wood tables, and always too crowded. For someone who had spent his life in small, understated Tokyo living spaces, it was completely out of his comfort zone. If he had any say in the design of Crystal Tokyo's future palace, then no such great hall would exist without a separate private dining area to hide out in. "I kind of feel like I'm in a museum or church or something."

"Or Hogwarts. Just don't touch the chicken patties. Or the eggs. Actually, I think I ate a lot of Fruit Loops in Annenberg."

Considering he had spent most of his high school career eating whatever greasy offerings Motoki served him at Crown, Mamoru couldn't complain. "At least it's a buffet."

"Shit, yeah. I complain, but I still ate like three of everything all the time." The brunette scratched at his stubble. "It's Neil, by the way. Guess I'm a jerk for not saying so before. You?"

"Mamoru."

"That Japanese?" The phone began buzzing again, skating frantically over the table's wood surface. This time, Neil bothered to pick it up and look at the display. "Hold that thought." He flipped the phone open, beaming into it. "Hey." A pause that only widened his grin. "It's not bullshit. It is absolute fact, and I got a guy here who can verify it. It's science. Look it up, homeboy." He paused again, pulled the phone away from his ear to check the time. "Half an hour? Hold on." He looked at Mamoru. "You like Mexican? Tacos? This place makes the best salsa in the universe."

"Uh..." Mamoru glanced down at his unfinished notes, his hard-won table, and his bag containing the unopened protein bar that would keep him going for the afternoon. 

Neil looked at him with chocolate brown eyes that were sincere and impossible to argue against. "You eat in Annenberg, bro. Sasha, my buddy here needs an intervention. A taco intervention. Can we do that?" He gave Mamoru a thumbs up. "Half an hour. Got it." Neil stood, shoving his phone in his pocket. "Come on, I'm rescuing you from another questionable Annenberg meal."

Mamoru's head swam as he stood, and wondered at what point he had agreed to such an excursion. "Your friend won't mind?"

Neil shoved his dirty notebook into his bag. "Nah, Sasha likes new people. And he understands tacos. Tacos are important."

"What about the 25 pages of essays you need to write?"

The brunette shrugged, picking up a seemingly random stack of five books. "I've got all night. Can't philosophize on an empty stomach. C'mon, man, you can't spend every waking moment of the day tied to your textbook."

Mamoru wanted to say that actually he could, and had done so quite easily for the past month, but for once, studying was no longer on his mind. "Best salsa in the universe?"

His new companion grinned, hoisting his bag up on his shoulder. "One taste of this stuff is like a transcendental experience. You'll be a changed man."

***

Neil drove too fast, and he used his hands when he spoke, one arm lazily draped across the steering wheel while the other gesticulated and punctuated his speech. The swollen finger, which he confirmed was indeed a sprain from hockey practice, seemed not to inhibit him as he pointed out important locations for Mamoru to note, most of them restaurants. Neil seemed to have an eye for shady little hole-in-the-wall places with amazing culinary masterpieces hidden in their depths. Within the ten minute car ride, he learned that such a thing as deep fried sushi existed, and that butter chicken pizza was to be coveted. 

"You can never have enough Mexican, though. That's what I love about the States. You get a Mexican restaurant like every five feet."

Mamoru watched yet another must-eat-at place whip by. "Are you not American?"

"Nah, I'm from Canada. We're the nice guys up north. I love my country and all, but there's a few things about this place you learn to love. You know you can buy beer in gas stations here? This country's amazing."

Mamoru decided not to mention that beer was available even in vending machines back in Japan, where drinking seemed like less of a thing. They pulled up outside of a trendy-looking vintage boutique. The mannequins in the window were dressed in clashing ensembles of varying eras, outlandish wigs and oversized petticoats making them all look like drag queens. Neil led him inside, past hipsters in flannel and band t-shirts, and straight to the counter where retro sunglasses and buttons were on display. 

Even in such an eclectic setting, the fiery copper-blond mess of hair that appeared from the back room was impossible to overlook. The slight figure that wore it was just this side of androgynous, just a shade masculine enough not to cause confusion. The seemingly endless amount of silver hoops and studs in his ears, the single lip ring, made him look combative, but when he spotted Neil, the young man's face lit into an easy smile that extended right up into his impossibly green eyes. "You're early."

"It's salsa. We couldn't wait. Sasha, this is my new buddy Mamoru. He's smart, and he needs tacos." Mamoru appreciated that Neil did not butcher his name. It seemed like even the most intelligent of Harvard students were unable to call him something that did not sound like "mammary."

Sasha held out a hand that was dotted with white paint and adorned with three heavy rings. His thumbnail was painted bright green to match his eyes. "Hey, I hope Neil didn't bully you into coming along. He's impossible to turn down sometimes."

Neil picked out a pair of aviator shades and slid them on, price tag dangling from his ear. "I don't bully. I cajole firmly into submission."

"Don't worry, he's mostly harmless. Hey--I saved you something." Sasha ducked beneath the counter for a moment and came up with a plastic bag, which he handed to Neil. 

Mamoru would not have thought it possible for the heavy man's voice to go up an entire octave, but somehow he managed it with near-girlish delight. "Smurfs!" While Mamoru was trying to figure out what kind of bizarre expletive his new companion had just squealed out, Neil pulled a blue t-shirt out of the bag and pushed the sunglasses on top of his head for a better look. "Is this original?"

"You know I wouldn't bother if it weren't."

"You're my fucking hero, Sasha! Look Mamoru, Smurfs!" 

Mamoru eyed the blue cartoon characters, uncertain of how they could be a source of excitement. "Um..."

Sasha leaned on the counter. "Don't worry, Mamoru. Nobody else other than Neil would care either."

"That's because my tastes are so refined that nobody else can conceive of them." Without hesitation or a glance at his very public surroundings, Neil dropped the shirt and sunglasses on the counter, reached back, and pulled his pirate shirt over his head in one swift move. Mamoru tried not to stare at the fact that someone he had known for less than an hour was now standing half-naked beside him. He also tried not to note that he had more defined biceps than Mamoru did.

Neil pulled on the blue shirt and the aviators, grinning like a little boy. "Now I look badass."

"You'll look more badass without the tag. C'mere." Sasha pulled his skinny, tight black jeans-clad rear up onto the counter and took hold of the back of his shirt. Neil dutifully bent towards him like a patient leashed dog until the blond had finished clipping the tag off the back. "There, now you look complete."

"Can you cut me a deal on the shades, too?"

"They're like, five bucks. Pay up, you asshole."

Neil did so, grumbling something or other about extortion.

"I just need to get my stuff. Hey, can you get down a box for me while you're here? All the tall people are off today, and that stepladder is out to kill me."

"After you made me pay full price? You can afford a better stepladder."

Sasha glared leaf-green daggers. "I just gave you a shirt."

"Ugh, fine." He swiped Mamoru on the arm. "Be right back."

Sasha followed Neil into the stock room. "The one in the top middle. Says 'receipt paper.'"

"You have an extra roll on the counter, man. I just saw it."

"Yeah, but I might need extra." Sasha leaned against the door frame, and cast a glance out at Mamoru. He had his back to them, as he idly looked over a row of jackets. "So are you planning to bring home every Japanese guy you meet?"

Neil grabbed the edge of the box. "Unless you got a better plan."

"Is this one at least a med student?"

"Premed, and yes."

"Moved here in the last couple months?"

"Also correct."

"Does he have a girlfriend?"

"I don't know, I'm not exactly going to hand him a list of vital questions, am I?" Neil shoved the box into Sasha's arms. "Why don't you ask him who he's seeing? Ask him whether she's secretly Moon royalty."

"This just seems like a slow way of doing things. There must be tons of first year premed guys from Japan."

"Well if you'd let Kain connect with Endy again, maybe we'd get some useful facts out of it, like his name."

"Don't." Sasha was testy over Kain's actions, mostly because he liked his leader alive.

"Okay, what do you think of him?" 

Sasha glanced again at the man in question. "He seems quiet. And nice."

"You say that like it's a criticism." 

"Well you can't say that Endy didn't sometimes come off as a right asshole on the first meeting."

"Sure, Endy did, but he was royalty, it was expected of him. You don't think he'd be a bit different this time?"

Sasha set the box on the floor, fishing out a roll of paper. "Maybe." 

"Have you seen his eyes?"

The blond paused. He hadn't actually thought about it, but there was something there. Something about the color. "Yeah."

"So you agree with me that there's potential here."

"I don't know. It's worth looking into, I guess." He paused to set the roll on the counter, still watching Mamoru's back. "He's so tall."

"Yeah, if you're the size of a teenage girl." Neil dodged the combat boot-clad kick aimed at his shins, a grin already plastered back on his face, as he lowered his new shades over his eyes. "Hey Mamoru, ready for tacos? You need to tell Sasha that stuff you said about frequency and emotional manipulation. He doesn't believe me."

Sasha was still fuming silently as Neil ushered his new buddy out of the store, wondering if there wasn't a better way.


	2. Of Beer and Sailors

Logan's Pub was dark, shady, and of questionable cleanliness. Mamoru allowed Neil to order him a bottle of some microbrew he had never heard of, only because he did not trust the glasses behind the bar to be hygienic. He sipped at it now--it really was rather good--as he watched the previous band pack up their instruments.

He was still a little baffled as to how he had found himself here. Somewhere during the course of listening to Neil and Sasha analyze the perfect fajita did he find himself being invited to see their friends' band. Though Mamoru would normally decline such an offer, the pair made it abundantly clear that he would be doing them a favor by coming, that they desperately needed warm bodies in the room to look sort of interested in what was happening on stage, and they would very much appreciate his help. The next thing he knew, Neil was picking him up at 8:00, and he was glancing around at the heavily-postered walls in Logan's, wondering whether some of the pockmarks in the wood that the posters half-covered were bullet holes.

As people shuffled around to get drinks before the next band set up, Neil leaned over to Sasha. "Twenty bucks on the fifth song."

The blond snorted, his rings clinking on the glass as he picked up his vodka tonic. "Not a chance. It won't happen a moment before the encore."

Neil leaned his muscular arms on the table, looking perfectly at home wearing a Smurfs t-shirt in such a sketchy venue. "You putting money on that, son?"

"Done." 

They shook across the table, much to Mamoru's befuddlement. "Um, what are you betting on?"

"Our friend Kain, he's kind of a..." Neil looked to Sasha. "What is Kain?"

Sasha sipped thoughtfully. "Uptight?"

"That's a word for it."

"Prudish?"

"Old manish?" Neil tried, to the laughter of both.

"He's concerned about appearances," Sasha amended more diplomatically. 

"And he plays drums, right, so he mostly just hides in the back and does his thing while the rest of the band jostles for the spotlight."

"But then one time someone started yelling for him to take off his shirt--"

"That may or may not have been me," the brunette grinned.

"--and he'd had a bit to drink--"

"And then Jaden--you'll meet him tonight too--he gets on the mic and starts egging him on."

"So then the whole crowd starts chanting at him to take it off. I didn't think he'd cave, to be honest. Kain doesn't give in easily."

"But that's what made it so amazing, see, you can't get Kain to do anything he doesn't want to. Especially if what he doesn't want to do involves showing off his pasty white body to a roomful of people."

"So now it's this running joke, seeing how long it takes to get Kain's shirt off."

"Jaden's in on it too. It's kind of a crowd-pleaser, I don't know why. Apparently some people really enjoy being blinded by the glare of Kain's white abs."

"I see," said Mamoru, who really did not. Maybe he would have to meet Kain to understand why this was an event.

"But there's no way he'll give in to pressure too early tonight," Sasha explained. "He's all cranky today, he thinks his classes are bullshit and one of his professors is a douchebag, so he's going to be all stubborn."

"Nah, that's where you're wrong," Neil smiled sagely, setting down his empty beer bottle. "He'll just have to drink faster if he wants to loosen up enough to play decently. We'll get him early, I guarantee it." He pointed at the bottle in Mamoru's hand. "Want another?"

He was surprised to notice that his careful sips had added up so fast, and that his bottle was nearly empty. "Uh, sure..." He watched as Neil bounded across the room and did not make it halfway before he found a cluster of people who delightedly shouted his name at his arrival. 

"Does he know, like, everybody?"

"Neil? Yeah, he's best friends with half of Boston." Sasha snorted as the tall brunette handed out sweeping hugs to about seven people at once. "He's the kind of person who sits down at a bus stop and ends up with three new buddies before the bus gets there. People just generally love him."

"So it's not so weird that I just met him in the library today."

"Oh no, I'm pretty sure that's one of the more normal places to be befriended by Neil. Now you've already eaten and drank with him, though, so I'm pretty sure your friendship status is already well sealed. Soon he'll be drunk dialing you at 3 a.m. to ask you why there aren't more female Autobots and what the social implication of their not being around means."

Mamoru didn't know what an Autobot was, but he thought that the idea of being asked about them at 3 a.m. was somewhat unpleasant. "He wouldn't really do that, would he?"

"Only if he really likes you."

"So how did you meet him?"

Sasha waved a ring-encrusted hand. "Oh, you know. I was waiting for a bus."

Neil returned with a beer in each hand, just as a new cluster of people began to set up on stage. He nodded his head toward it. "That's Jaden there, the guy with the guitar case." Mamoru leaned forward to see past the people lingering in his line of sight. A young man with curly, pale blond hair that flopped over his eyes vaulted up on stage, a cheeky smile on his boyish face. While the rest of the band seemed to be taking their time setting up, Jaden looked like he couldn't move fast enough for his satisfaction, flitting from one piece of equipment to another like a hummingbird. 

Sasha clicked his cellphone shut with a snap. A moment later, Jaden paused mid-run, pulled his own cell from his back pocket and skimmed it. He had barely glanced at it before he scowled and made a rude gesture in Sasha's direction.

Mamoru tried to work out how the two of them could possibly be friends, or if they were, what sort of friendship this was. "Um, what did you say?"

"That he's hot like a Jonas Brother, and I wish to have his babies."

The Japanese man decided to just give up altogether on understanding anything that was said to him tonight.

"And that will be Kain. He's the one acting like he doesn't want to be here." Neil did not even have to point, because it was immediately evident which one of them he had been describing. While the rest of the musicians seemed to fit the venue, with their casual clothing and outlandish hair (he glimpsed the lead singer's fuschia braids), Kain appeared to be a stray lawyer who had wandered by accident into their ranks and now stood on stage, holding a microphone stand as though he was here to inspect its safety and efficiency rather than play anything into it. His collared dress shirt was neatly pressed, his striking white hair, while quite long, was impeccably sleek and well-groomed. He gave a curt nod when Jaden said something, the blond's radiant grin so completely opposite of his neutral expression that it was unfathomable that the two were even acquainted.

"Is he really in the band?"

"Seems crazy, doesn't it? Kain'll tell anybody who asks that he's only in the band as a favor, but it's complete bullshit. He loves having a reason to play. Hates the crowd, but loves to play."

Mamoru glanced back up at the stage. It was true that, for somebody who looked so unhappy about standing on that stage, Kain was paying very close attention to setting up the instruments properly. 

The first band had been rather lackluster. Mamoru didn't really know music, and even he could tell just by glancing around at the bored expressions and lack of attention from the rest of the bar that it wasn't going over too well. Neil had assured him that the first band always sucks, but seeing as how Killed by Sailors, the one they were here to see, wasn't headlining either, he hoped that he would not be seeing a repeat performance. "So what kind of music do your friends play?"

"Pretentious indie post-punk hipster bullshit, mostly."

Mamoru could only stare blankly at Neil. He wasn't even sure what most of those words meant.

Sasha came to his rescue. "It's mostly what we call 'indie.' Which is a misnomer, because it's supposed to be short for 'independent,' meaning they aren't under a major label. But most people use it as a catch-all term to slap onto any acoustic or unpolished-sounding or inaccessible music."

"Or if your music is indistinguishable from a badger and a cat having a dispute to the sound of a drum machine," Neil added unhelpfully.

"Well they do have Kain," Sasha pointed out.

"Because he's Kain, and therefore only partially human, my description stands."

Mamoru racked his brain to think of some way to stay relevant in the conversation; for some reason he couldn’t determine, some part of him wanted to get a 3 a.m. Autobot call. “So they sound like...Kings of Leon?”

Sasha scoffed and spit a lime pit on the floor. “Kings of Leon are like, the Nickelback of indie.”

“Don’t make fun of Nickleback,” Neil said, his jovial face suddenly darkening.

This prompted an epic eye-roll from Sasha as he leaned in to whisper to Mamoru. “He’s only defending them because they’re from Canada. Neil would go to see a Celine Dion/Justin Beiber double billing just to support his syrup-covered motherland.”

“Laugh all you want.” Neil apparently had very good hearing, even through the din of the seedy bar. “Canada gave the world Rush and Neil Young, while Russia’s biggest musical act is a bear riding a unicycle and whacking cymbals together.”

“Do Killed by Sailors sound like Rush?” Mamoru asked.

“No,” Sasha and Neil said in unison. “They’d actually have to qualify as ‘good’ for that to happen,” Sasha clarified, and drained the rest of his drink. “All right kids, I’ve got to go set up and feed Kain more alcohol so that he’s drunk by the encore. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll take off his pants, too. Get your cameraphones ready just in case.”

While Sasha went to help with the sound check, Neil and Mamoru took their time finishing their drinks before finding a place in front of the stage. By the time they had done so, much of the bar had already begun surging away from the tables and toward the stage. By the time the fuschia-haired lead singer had announced the band’s name into the mic, the two were standing in the middle of a sizeable crowd, which Logan’s by no means had been built to handle.

Having only ever attended whatever pop concerts Usagi had desperately begged him to bring her to, Mamoru had never experienced the kind of show where people were crammed into a small room, happily dancing and jostling each other with little concern for personal space or the occasional misplaced elbow. Subway commuters may have regularly crammed like sardines into the train every morning, but he could not recall any of them lurching into him in some kind of drunken dance, and they rarely smelled so heavily of sweat and alcohol. Mamoru found himself hastily muttering apologies to those who bumped him, even when it was clearly the other person's fault. Neil seemed unbothered by it, but then, Neil was so solidly built that most people just bounced off him.

Though they stood close to the stage, Neil was mindful of the fact that they were two very tall guys, and a few times he grabbed some tiny girl out of the crowd and placed her in front of him to get a better view. One of them giggled appreciatively at this treatment, and pulled her savior down to her level to give him a peck on the cheek. He gave her a lazy grin. "So if I get you closer, do I get another?"

"Depends on how close you can get me. Your cheeks are awfully prickly."

"So what do I get if I introduce you to the band?"

"You'll just have to find out, won't you?"

The next thing Mamoru knew, Neil was shoving his way through the crowd, the girl (and her friend) following closely behind his broad back. He received his payment in the form of another kiss, and left them standing against the stage between Jaden and the lead singer. 

When he returned to Mamoru, he gave him a cocky wink. "And that's how it's done, son."

Mamoru had to admit he was slightly impressed, but not altogether convinced. "You don't really think you're going home with that girl, do you?"

"I think my chances are good."

"What do you think she'll do about her friend?" Mamoru had been around Usagi's friends long enough now to realize that girls tended to stick together.

"She can come too, if she wants. Hey, you're sure about that girl of yours back in Tokyo? Because you could have a go at the friend, if you want. She's pretty hot."

Mamoru spluttered his beer. "That's--I'm not really--"

Neil's bark of laughter drowned out even the loud music for a moment, and he clapped Mamoru on the back. "Nobody's gonna make you cheat on your lady, bro. Must be one fantastic girl you've got waiting for you."

He realized that his face had grown hot, and hoped desperately that he did not look as red as he feared he might. "She is," Mamoru muttered, though the words were lost beneath the sound of Kain's drums.

They didn’t sound like Rush, but Killed by Sailors was admittedly better than a bear riding a unicycle and clashing cymbals together. At one point Jaden started picking the opening chords to “Come As You Are”, which prompted a rather strong reaction from Neil. “No! No Nirvana! You suck!”

Jaden knew exactly where to toss his scowl. Mamoru tried to shrink down as he felt every eye in the venue on his burly partner. Neil was unaffected by the negative reinforcement. “Stop murdering Nirvana, Jaden! You’re no Cobain!”

“He sounds like him, though,” Sasha appeared suddenly on Mamoru’s other side. Neil tossed him an incredulous look.

The blond’s smile was chilling and sinister, and brought something up in Mamoru; not a memory, exactly, but a scrap of lost, familiar feeling that wasn’t enough to hold onto for more than a few seconds. It left him feeling cold.

Sasha’s green eyes flashed as he delivered the bon mot. “Post-lead sandwich.”

“Ooooh!” Neil reached across Mamoru’s body to fist-bump with Sasha. “Good one, man! Cold, but good!” He turned back to the stage. “This is not a Nirvana tribute band! Play Jonas Brothers! JOOOOONAS!” The tiny girl that he had rescued squeezed up to his side and gazed adoringly up at him as he started to chant. “Jo-NAS, Jo-NAS, Jo-NAS!” The crowd joined in, and suddenly Logan’s sounded like the headquarters of teenybopper central. “Jo-NAS, Jo-NAS, Jo-NAS!”

Kain glared homicide in Neil’s direction as Jaden got on the mic. “Hey, I think that guy’s drunk! Security!”

Naturally, the bouncers were all friends with Neil, and he was allowed to stay and wreck havok for the rest of the band’s set, at one point yelling loudly for a Lil’Wayne song, and then a Miley Cyrus one, and then started the call-out for Kain to take of his shirt. 

“KAIN! Show us your tits!”

Some of the drunker members of the audience agreed with this sentiment, and joined in the chant. “Show us your tits! Show us your tits!” The rest of the band, including Jaden, joined in on this sentiment. “TITS! TITS! TITS! TITS!” 

Mamoru was almost feeling sympathy for the poor drummer, who glared coldly down at the chanting crowd and seemed like he wanted nothing to do with such antics. That is, until he threw back the rest of the amber-colored liquid in his glass, and then pointed a single drumstick at the instigator of the whole mess. In the blink of an eye, the Smurfs t-shirt was going over his head and Mamoru was eye-to-nipple-level with a slightly hairy bare chest for the second time that day.

The crowd went wild; if Killed by Sailors couldn’t win them over with their music, they were definitely getting them with their theatrics. Kain swept the button-up over his head and placed it carefully on the floor before crashing a cymbal. Jaden wasn’t far behind, but chose instead to rip his off, Incredible Hulk-style. “Everyone take it off!”

To Neil’s delight, the diminutive girls that he had rescued from a crushing death pulled their tank tops off, revealing spangled chain-store bras barely covering some barely-legal breasts. Mamoru watched as Neil’s face lit up and was barely aware that the brunette was shaking his arm until it started hurting.

Sasha got the hint. “Mamoru, get naked!” He had already pulled his shirt off, revealing a glittering nipple ring and a huge bird tattoo with long flaming tail feathers soaring up the side of his ribs. 

“Uh...” Mamoru stood frozen on the spot, as around him he could see that he was quickly becoming one of the only fully-clothed bodies in the room. It was hard to tell which would be worse, really: the embarrassment of disrobing in a roomful of people, or of being the only one who refused to.

And then suddenly Neil was tugging at his shirt instead of his arm. “It’s not too hard, man. Just get rid of this.” The brunette’s new girlfriends giggled in delight as Neil pulled his shirt up to his armpits.

“Okay, okay!” Mamoru caught the hem of his shirt before his enthusiastic new friend could pull it over his head, quite sure that they had not yet reached a point where he was comfortable being undressed by him. If it was between being slightly humiliated of his own volition or being doubly humiliated against his will, then he was going to at least be in control of the situation.

He struggled for a few moments, his shirt collar strangling him as he tried to wiggle the material over his chest and shoulders, and then conceded defeat as he realized that the snugger fit of his Japanese-made garment was tailored to be carefully unbuttoned instead of ripped off like a t-shirt. Which is what he did. And promptly felt like a gigantic nerd.

Neil was elated. “MAMORU IS NAKED!” The topless girls cheered and starting jumping up and down, much to every Y-chromosome delight, and Mamoru felt his cheeks flush with slight embarrassment. Sasha pressed a shot glass into his hand, and he threw it back without a second thought. 

Things got a bit fuzzier after that.

When the lead singer, now down to what looked like a homemade sequined bra to match her fuschia hair, lead everyone in an Irish drinking song, Neil threw one arm around Mamoru and the other around the two girls and swayed them all wildly, his voice roaring over everyone else’s. The tremendous discomfort that Mamoru would have normally felt as they lurched from side-to-side had fizzled away in a boozy haze that left him quite content to be part of Neil’s spectacle. 

The show concluded loudly, and despite Neil’s earlier success, he was unable to convince any member of the band to take off their pants during the encore. He was nevertheless jovial as they pushed two tables together, with promises to the girls that they would soon meet the band if they stuck around. 

“Technically,” Sasha explained when Neil demanded his money, “the shirt came off after the fifth song.”

“The sixth song hadn’t started yet. Therefore, it was still within the fifth song’s time slot. Therefore, I win. Therefore, pay up.”

Neil grinned as Sasha grudgingly reached for his wallet. “Fuck yeah, I know where that money’s going. Two more pitchers, baby. You’re still drinking, right Mamoru?”

“Uh...”

As the brunette reached eagerly for the crisp twenty in Sasha’s hand, a third hand snatched it from between them. Neil rounded on the usurper standing behind him. “Dude! I won that fair and square!”

“Really? I thought you won it by making bets about me.” Up-close, Kain was a much taller and more intimidating person than he had seemed when lurking at the back of the stage. His white shirt was still as crisp as if it had never been removed. The slight flush and subtle sheen of sweat on his skin was the only indication that he had been fiercely playing drums for the past 45 minutes, and if his hair looked slightly less tidy than before, it still could not qualify as “unkempt.”

“No, I won it by winning bets about you, bro. And I need that twenty. I already said I’d buy the next round.”

“Well then, I guess you’ll be buying it without your ill-gotten gains.”

Neil scowled as he stalked off, and Kain smoothly took his chair beside Mamoru, either not noticing or not caring that Neil’s girls were staring at him in awed adoration.

“Do I get my twenty back?” Sasha tried hopefully.

“Since I was the subject of your ridiculous bet, I think that makes it my twenty,” Kain replied, businesslike. Mamoru thought it was very smart of Sasha not to ask again, seeing as how the white-haired man’s demeanor seemed as cold and immobile as a glacier. He wisely changed the subject, instead. “This is Mamoru, by the way. Neil rescued him from the Harvard library.”

When they shook, Kain’s hand was cool and firm as Mamoru had imagined, not the crushing grip of Neil’s, but controlled. “Good to meet you, mate.”

Mamoru had only heard that accent in movies, and through his ears it sounded like “Gudda meetya mait.” There was a slight delay in his response as his brain filtered the foreign words out of their accent. “Oh. Same here.”

A pitcher of foaming amber liquid was plunked down in front of him as Neil rejoined the table. “Oh Mamoru, sorry; I forgot to tell you that Kain only speaks and understands bogan Kiwi, so you have to talk to him in his native tongue. Allow me to demonstrate.” He cleared his throat and leaned over to shout in Kain’s ear. “OY MATE. THROW ANOTHA SHRIMP ON THE BAHRBIE!”

The glacier melted as Kain threw an elbow into Neil’s side. Mamoru jumped in alarm before he saw the smile on both of their faces as an impromptu wrestling match started. Neil laughed hysterically, setting off the girls, before Kain pulled Neil’s Smurf Tshirt over his head and got him into a headlock. For a moment, Mamoru indulged in picking the mental scab of wishing that he had that kind of easy camaraderie with friends instead of formal politeness, and how his closest friends were--are---rocks. 

The full force of that thought rolled over him like a wave, seeming to silence the joking laughter of his new acquaintances and the shrieking giggles of the girls. He had made an agreement with himself not to think about it too much since he moved here. About the semiprecious stones on his desk that had grown silent, cold. Not a day went by that he did not open their box, hold them, call to them, an enormous knot of fear coiling inside his chest--

Both the table and Mamoru’s thoughts were suddenly jolted by the wrestling pair, sloshing beer onto both table and his pants. “Sorry, bro.” Neil reached across Kain to give him a bruising punch on the arm.

As jarring and painful as it was, the punch made him feel warmer, seemed to shake off the creeping dread that he had no wish to attend to. Kain seemed a little warmer too, because he even smiled a little as he slid Mamoru a full glass. “Did Neil drag you out here? You want to watch out for him. He has a way of lowering inhibitions and making people agree to more than they want to.”

“I don’t make people do anything. Not my fault that everyone finds me charming.” He flashed a grin at his girl as he said this, and she smiled indulgently back, though her friend continued to eye Kain with a kind of desperate longing. 

The girls introduced themselves as Melissa and Hilary, sorority sisters at Boston U, but went by “Milly” and “Hilly”, which was impossible for Mamoru to pronounce correctly. They giggled like maniacs at his fumbling attempt. Mamoru noticed that Kain seemed to be souring on their presence from that moment, despite Hilly’s best efforts in angling towards him to show off her cleavage.

“So are you Greek?”

“No,” Kain replied curtly as he looked away.

Hilly was persistent. “Why nooot? It’s so much fun.”

Kain chose to simply stop responding to her. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and squinted down at the display. “Jaden needs help loading the van. I’ll be back in a bit.” He took off like his shoes were on fire and his ass was catching.

No sooner had he left than Jaden slid into his recently vacated seat. “Hey.” He gave Milly and Hilly a once-over, and found Mamoru more interesting.

“Aren’t you supposed to be loading the van?” Sasha said.

“No. That’s just what I tell Kain so that he does it. I did all of the unloading.” He turned to Mamoru and smiled. “Did you like the show?”

“It was--”

“Because we wrote a lot of new songs this time and I wasn’t sure if they were any good.” His leg was thumping rhythmically against the table leg, causing the liquid in everyone’s glasses to ripple and slosh.

“No, they were--”

“If they sucked it was because of our bassist--he’s not very good and but since he’s a music arts major he thinks he knows everything--so you go to Harvard, too right? With Neil?” Every word was coming out of the blonde man at machine-gun pace.

“Not with N--”

“Right on. So what are you majoring in? Is it hard? Are you going to do the Primal Scream this year? You should, man, Neil did it last year and it was probably the funniest fucking--I think I have the pictures on my phone still.” He whipped out his phone and started scrolling through it, never letting up on the rhythmic foot tapping. Mamoru wondered if he was on some sort of stimulant drug.

“Oh crap I can’t find it. Maybe I deleted it but I have it on my laptop I think, I can send them to you if you give me your--or are you on Facebook? Or something? I have--”

“JADEN!” Sasha shouted. For the umpteenth time that night, Mamoru jumped in shock and sloshed beer on his pants. “TAKE YOUR FUCKING PILL.”

Jaden stopped his foot-tapping and checked the time on his phone. “Oh yeah.” He pulled a keychain out of his pocket and unscrewed a tiny metal cylinder attached by a carabiner. “Sorry,” he said as he popped a tiny white pill in his mouth. “I lost track of time. I’ve got to take these every eight hours because the extended release ones don’t work as well.”

Sasha rolled his eyes. “If Ritalin ever stops working for you altogether, we’ll have no choice but to put you down.” He tapped Mamoru with his elbow. “Give it a few minutes, and he’ll be tolerable. We’re lucky he remembered his keys.”

“He’s forgotten?”

“Oh yeah,” Jaden said, resuming the foot-tapping. “I’ll even admit that I’m unbearable when that happens. Kain keeps some on him just in case I forget.”

“But... you play amazingly!” Milly said breathlessly. 

Jaden suddenly found her far more interesting. “Really? You like our stuff? What do you like most about us?”

“She probably couldn’t hear anything over the sound of you wailing into the microphone,” Neil cut in, looking slightly offended that he was losing the attention of the girls. 

“Obviously she disagrees. So sweetheart, tell me more about my playing.”

“It... it sounds like a dream,” she said emphatically, and even Mamoru thought that she could not have been listening very well, by that description. 

Jaden, however, seemed to find this compliment adequate. “You were the one in the green bra, right? With the kittens?”

Milly dissolved into bashful giggles. “Yes! Did you like it?”

There was something almost devilish in his blue eyes. “Most definitely. You can never go wrong with kittens.”

“It’s also too small,” Sasha muttered as he played with his straw. It took him a moment to realize that all eyes were staring at him incredulously. “What? It is! You could really use a proper fitting. Most women don’t realize that they’re wearing the wrong band size.”

Jaden stared at him. “How the fuck are we housemates?”

“What? Just because you’d rather they’re almost popping out doesn’t mean she would. Girls are happier when their girls are supported. You’re old enough to know this by now.”

Milly went silent, apparently too mortified by her apparently poor bra choices as a topic of conversation to pursue anybody further.

Hilly was swiveling her head around. “Where did you friend go?”

“Who, Kain?” Neil was beginning to have a hard time sitting up straight. “Why?”

She shrugged, trying to be nonchalant as her friend giggled. “I think he’s cute.”

“Oh Tilly, if you only knew.”

“Hilly.”

Neil frowned. “No, that one’s Hilly.”

“I’m Milly,” Milly said.

“What? No, you’re not.”

“Yes I am!” She smiled and tugged on his shirtsleeve.

Hilly cleared her throat. “So...what’s the story? With Ken?”

“Kain, Milly.”

“I’m Hilly.”

“Oh sorry! Anyway, Kain is sort of...well...” His voice trailed off as he exchanged a glance with Sasha. The blonde shook his head slightly and muttered into his vodka tonic. Neil heaved a huge, exaggerated sigh. “Kain is...recovering. Slowly.”

“Oh no, what happened!”

“It’s so sad, Molly.”

“Milly!”

“Sorry, Milly. Kain doesn’t like to talk about it, but he’s recovering from--” He paused for dramatic effect and took a swig of beer; Milly and Hilly were practically hanging off the edge of their seats. Mamoru leaned in, curious to what was going on with Kain. “A really bad broken heart.”

“Oh that sucks.”

“You don’t even know the half of it, Milly.”

“Hilly!”

“Sorry. It’s pretty fucked up--Kain was left at the altar.”

“NO WAY!” Milly shrieked. Sasha groaned and stood up to use the restroom.

“Yes, totally!” Neil leaned closer, his elbow skidding on a wet spot on the table. “He was supposed to get married to this girl, they’d been going out for years, and he thought she loved him, but...she left him for his brother. On their wedding day.”

“Shut up!”

“Really?” Mamoru said. That would explain a lot about Kain, but Jaden caught his eye across the table and shook his head slightly.

“Milly, it sucked.” Neil grabbed her and pulled her directly under his armpit. “And you know the worst part? He took it well, and didn’t fall apart or anything, but he told me that--” Another sigh. “He’s scared that he’ll never be able to love again.”

“Awwwww!” The girls crooned in unison. Hilly looked ready to do anything within her power to heal Kain’s broken heart, and pulled her lip gloss out of her purse to prepare.

“Speak of the devil,” Neil said as Kain reappeared. The white haired man looked supremely pissed off, and Mamoru spotted a crease on his shirt, just below the collar. It was the Kain-equivalent of wearing hobo-rags.

“Jaden, where the hell were you? Stan and I had to load--”

Hilly and her newly glossed lips interrupted him. “I’m so sorry.”

“What?”

“About you know...” She trailed one hand down his sleeve. The alcohol must have made her bold, because she was going right to it. “What happened with everything.”

“What’s everything?” Across the table, Jaden tried to disguise his laughter as coughing.

“You know. Your fiancee and your brother.”

Kain’s brows knitted together. He couldn’t see Neil nearly imploding as he tried to keep his laughter at bay. “What are you talking about? I don’t have a fiancee or a brother.” It didn’t take him too long to figure it out, and his face reddened like a stoplight. “Neil, you stupid asshole!”

“What! I’m just trying to help!” 

Kain looked murderous. “I don’t want your kind of help.”

Hilly looked confused, and seemed determined to soldier on. “But... but your fiancee, it must have been so hard on you when she left...”

“Yeah, not so much, what with her not existing and all.” He looked down at the simpering girl who was still fondling his sleeve. “Can I have my arm back?”

Hilly looked like she had swallowed something bitter. “Well I can see why she left you at the altar, I’m sure your brother was much more charming!” With a dramatic toss of her hair, the young woman stormed off. Milly, blushing profusely, hurried after her, leaving a girl-less sulking Neil in her wake.

Kain sank back into his chair, still deeply flushed, and drained half his beer. 

“So...” Mamoru attempted to normalize the situation, “you don’t have a brother then, I gather?”

“Not unless my dad’s got himself a new girlfriend since I last visited, in which case, it’s about damn time.”

Sasha slipped through the crowd, fresh drink in hand. “Oh good, it’s finished already? I couldn’t watch that.”

“Yeah, thanks for the heads up,” Kain muttered grumpily. “Nice to know you’ve totally got my back.”

The blond played with a lime slice. “I am a neutral party in this matter and refuse to be involved.”

“So Mamoru, how do you like Harvard? It’s your first year, right?” Jaden was no longer jiggling the table, although he appeared to have stolen the coasters from under every drink on the table and constructed a coaster tower when nobody was looking.

“Oh, yeah. It’s really nice.” He wasn’t sure that he had been able to open his mouth long enough to mention that detail, but then there was too much going on around Mamoru for him to keep up with everything, and Sasha could have mentioned it at any point. 

The blond nodded wisely. “Lots of good parties at Harvard. Also lots of douches who think they know everything, but at least they buy decent beer.”

“Are you not drinking tonight?” Jaden seemed to be the last person at the table who would be content with the glass of water he was spinning between his fingers.

“Can’t, with Ritalin. I skip it when I want to drink much, but if I’m playing, well. It’s hard to remember all the chords when all you can think about is the shirt some girl’s wearing and if we should change the song title and if pandas are really bears and how red gummi bears are the best kind.”

Neil had kind of oozed down into his chair in the absence of female company, but he suddenly perked up. “Dude, speaking of food. Know what we need? Right now? We need some fucking hot wings, that’s what we need. Mamoru? Hot wings?”

“Uh...”

“You like spicy food, right? Of course you do; your people invented wasabi. Know what goes with hot wings? Jägerbombs.”

“In what universe,” Sasha asked incredulously, “would hot wings and Jägerbombs belong together?”

“The question you want to be asking,” Neil grinned, “is in what universe wouldn’t they belong together? We’re doing this. Kain, you in?”

“No.”

“Yes you are.”

Two greasy baskets of hot wings and a couple shots later, the bar was spinning slightly, but Mamoru was no longer concerned about that. After his Ritalin dosage had evened out, Jaden proved himself to be a highly amusing storyteller, rattling off just the right amount of vivid details and pausing at all the right moments. He described more than a few adventures from the time when he and Neil had attempted to brew their own beer.

“So I’m standing there with a mouthful of the most vile stuff I’ve ever tasted, my tongue’s burning almost as bad as the last time I spent the night with Neil’s mom, I’ve almost got tears pouring down my face, and all Sasha can say is, ‘Brew too strong for you there, sweetheart?’” The exaggerated impression of his fellow blond was clearly intended to make him seem a bit more feminine than he was, as Mamoru was sure that Sasha’s wrists were not that limp. “And Neil, the unhelpful git, keeps telling me to man up and chug it down.”

“Psh, like you wouldn’t have done the same thing.” The brunette discarded a chicken bone, the humor in his voice betraying no embarrassment whatsoever at his role in the story.

“So finally Kain comes in, takes one sniff of the bottle, looks right at Neil and says, ‘did you bother to rinse them after you bleached the bottles?’”

Mamoru’s eyebrows shot up, a plethora of possible reactions to such a toxic substance running through his mind. “You didn’t?”

Neil snorted. “So I missed a step. It was almost worth it for the look on your face, man.”

“And that,” Jaden concluded, “on top of the fact that we have exploded more bottles than we’ve saved, and our carpet will never smell the same again, is why we are no longer attempting to brew beer.”

Neil ripped a greasy chicken wing in half and sucked the meat off one end. “We should try cider. Cider’s easy.”

Kain spoke up. “Not if you aren’t going to clean up after yourselves.” 

“What? We clean up.”

“Dabbing at the soaking wet carpet with a paper towel and then Febrezing the rest is not cleaning. You’re the reason girls think we live in the underbelly of an unclean pub.”

“I think that just adds to my dashing mystique. Not that it helps yours, though. That cause has been lost since the beginning of time.”

Sasha looked up. “Hey, Mamoru’s got a girl! Show them your girl, Mamoru.”

He obligingly pulled out his wallet, torn between secret pride and a feeling that he was sharing some private treasure.

Jaden whistled at the picture. “Damn, man, you were able to pry yourself away with that waiting at home for you?”

“Don’t you have a girlfriend?”

He grinned as he handed the wallet to Kain. “Not since the last one slashed my bike tires. Sasha’s got this weird on-again-off-again relationship with someone with a lot of metal in her face who may actually be the linebacker for the Crimson, but we haven't been able to find out for sure.” He paused, giving Sasha a nasty smirk. “I’m not sure he’s figured it out yet either.”

Sasha looked unconcerned. “You only say that because Sam could kick your ass without breaking a sweat.”

“She’s very pretty,” Kain said admiringly. It was not the kind of department store portrait with cheesy, plastered smiles that Mamoru so abhorred. It was a simple snapshot, which Minako, with her eye so trained for beauty, had taken at sunset, so that the golden-pink hue washed over Usagi’s slender form as she sat on the hillside in a simple sundress, gazing ahead. The soft smile and pink cherries of her dress spoke of the cheerful girl who brightened every room, but the distant look in her eyes and the way she held her head spoke of the queen she was slowly becoming. 

“Yeah, she’s beautiful,” Mamoru sighed. His good sense told him to stop talking right there, but his inebriated emotions drowned out good sense and urged him to keep going. “‘Specially her smile. Her smile’s pretty. And her hair. Her hair’s golden, like... gold. And long. Really long. She’s got like, eight feet of hair. Gets everywhere. ‘Specially when we’re in bed together and I wake up with my face all caught in it like a net. Have you ever,” he turned to Kain, who was nodding politely, and therefore obviously wanted to hear all about it, “unclogged eight feet of hair out of the drain?”

Neil was laughing somewhere beside him, obviously pleased with his story. “Lookit him, he’s so cute when he talks! This one’s my new favorite. Can we keep him?”

He swiveled to look at Neil, who was being annoyingly hazy. “New favorite what?”

“Best friend, obviously! And this calls for nothing less than Mario Kart.”

One swirling roller coaster ride of a walk to the parking lot later, and Mamoru found himself crammed into the back seat of a car with four other grown men, two of which were loudly singing and swaying beside him. Jaden, in the driver’s seat, shouted something witty out the window, and Mamoru had no idea what he said or what it meant, but it was funny, and that was all that mattered.

Stricken by sudden inspiration, he whipped out his phone and dialed Usagi’s number. When it went to voice mail, for some unfathomable reason that could not possibly have had to do with the fact that she was likely in class right now, he left her a long rambling Japanese-English mishmash of a message that proclaimed how he missed getting tangled in her eight-foot hair and included many “I love you”s in both languages. As he hung up, and Neil and Sasha broke into a heavily-altered and highly dirty version of one of Killed By Sailors’ songs, he thought that he had never had such a good night.

***

His mouth tasted like it had formerly housed somebody’s dirty sock, and that was the least of his discomfort. The back of his throat burned, his head pounded so bad that he thought his skull might have caved in, and there must have been something wrong with his hearing, because some kind of high, tinny song kept looping through his ears. It took an eternity of painful blinking for his eyes to adjust to what must have been the most accursed light that the sun had ever sent to torment man. It was then that he found himself face-down on an orange tweed couch that smelled of mildew and the remains of someone’s leftover dinner. His arm was jammed painfully into his chest, and when he tried to move it, he found it asleep. 

A television flickered obnoxiously across from him, a score board showing that Luigi had won the race, while the man in green himself repeatedly zoomed by in victory. The congratulatory music played on a constant loop, just in case he was in need of reminding that the race was complete. 

Mamoru wanted to curl up into a ball of pain, but more than that, he really wanted to pee. After watching Luigi make his victory lap several times, he decided that he could do the former after taking care of the latter, and so heaved himself off the couch and shuffled slowly in search of the bathroom.

He dared to glance at himself in the mirror as he was washing his hands, and thought he looked like death. His hair was standing up in all directions, casting strange shadows over his pale skin, and his eyes were ringed with dark purple bags. He did not dare guess what he had been doing the night before to put him in such a state.

He met Jaden on his painful shuffle back to the living room. The blond looked far too chipper for his own current state. “Hey, you’re alive!” Mamoru grunted something that may have been an affirmative. “Rough night, huh? I’ve never seen anyone projectile vomit that far, and I’ve got Neil to compare to.”

Mamoru drew both hands over his face as he sank into the couch. “Really?”

“Yeah--don’t worry about the shrubs you hit. They’ve been dead for ages. You mostly got the neighbor’s yard, anyway.”

He groaned in shame, sinking his head deeper into his hands. Something more responsible than the beast he had obviously become the night before reminded him that today was Monday, and he had a 10:30 class. “What time is it?”

“2:45.”

Kill me now, he thought. Mamoru had never missed a class in his life. Of course, he had missed his first year at Harvard, but as Galaxia had killed him at the time, it still qualified as “not in his life.”

“Yeah, I tried to wake you up once, but you were totally out. Kain figures we should let you stay until you’re feeling better. So yeah, want to go get breakfast?”

He could still make his 3:30 class if he hurried. There was bound to be a bus stop nearby. He could run. But the thought of moving, let alone running, sounded impossible right now, and it was immediately clear that his whole day was already a waste. “Sure. Okay.”

The blond grinned. “Neil knows a good place. You’ll love it.”


End file.
